The opening sequence, the one that pays homage to “2001, A Space Odyssey,” reminded me of a photograph I saw a few years ago. I don’t remember whether it was online or in a book. But it was of an SS officer, dressed in a trenchcoat, holding his pistol to the head of a naked infant that he was holding upside down by one of its ankles. And as photographs can sometimes do, this one burned a hole in my mind. And the opening sequence in “Barbie” fit neatly into that hole.
Other than that, I found the movie rather sweet. I mean that. But the opening was absolutely horrific—little girls, I mean, not much older than toddlers, holding their baby dolls by one ankle, swinging them like clubs as they smashed the heads of other baby dolls. And as if that weren’t bad enough, these once innocent little girls had rage written all over their faces. Not just anger but pure rage.
Now, I’m a symbolism guy, especially when it comes to words and imagery. I know that strong images can have lasting impacts, whether they’re strongly positive or strongly negative. It doesn’t matter. It’s the image itself that leaves its mark, not the context within which it’s presented. The subconscious mind doesn’t read context. It only knows images and what the images mean.
So, when I see an anomaly in a film, like the opening sequence in "Barbie", I have to wonder why it was put there. What is it about “2001, A Space Odyssey” that’s germane to “Barbie”? And believe me, this part of the movie is in stark contrast to the heartfelt lightness of the rest of the story. It is stunningly dark.
I know—“2001, A Space Odyssey” was about humanity’s evolution, right? Godlike aliens from another world were jumpstarting the human race. In that movie, there were chimps dancing around a black monolith, smashing each other’s skulls with thigh bones, implying that the first tools were weapons. Maybe they were. I don’t know. But if they were weapons, that doesn’t say much for us, does it. It means that our fundamental, most primal motivation is violence.
Ouch.
But today, it’s not violence against each other that’s at the root of the gender wars. It’s violence against the false constructs that nature and society impose on us that riles us the most. Viva la Revolucion! And that’s what gender roles are, aren’t they? Social constructs with no causal relationship to biology. That’s the message of the imagery of the opening sequence. What else would make it possible for an SS officer to shatter a baby’s head or a little girl not much older than a toddler do the same?
Men have always been the head smashers. It’s their job. And they can do it because they know how to shut down their feelings. You have to. Otherwise, the horror of killing would drive a man insane. But what if you were already insane? What if smashing heads didn’t bother you at all? You’d probably come to believe that care and empathy, too, were nothing more than artificially imposed social constructs, restrictions that deserve to be smashed because they’re made up. And if you’re going to justify your psychopathy, what better falsehood to destroy than the so-called “natural” instinct of motherhood? I mean, why not strike at the root of the tree?
Now, as I said, I found the rest of the movie to be rather sweet because it strongly affirms the rights of girls and women to explore all areas of life, not just motherhood and homemaking. But now, there are mother Barbies, too. It’s not like the bulk of the movie overtly says that a mother’s protective and nurturing instincts are social constructs. By itself, it doesn’t overtly say that at all. But the opening, on the other hand, strongly implies it.
“2001, A Space Odyssey,” was all about evolution—chimps overcoming the constraints of their biology by using primitive objects as tools, even if they had to club each other over the head to do it. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet, right? The ends, evolutionarily speaking, seem to justify any means, no matter how hateful and brutal.
So, to append such brutality and rage to the beginning of a heartfelt romp through a story about women’s social evolution asks a question that begs to be answered: why? Why is it necessary to preface such a positive message with the darkest imagery known to mankind? Infanticide. Killing babies, if not literally, like the SS officer, then symbolically, as the little girls do. The message is the same. The imagery is the same. The social construct, if you believe it, is the same.
The hatred and the ennui of domesticity in the opening sequence is palpable. It’s not so much that we hate each other—we hate nature itself. We hate our bodies because they hurt and eventually wear out and die. We hate everyone else because they remind us of our own frailties. Existence is pathetic and deserves to be ended. There is no afterlife or a next life and therefore no reason to act one way or another. Nothing matters. So, do what you want.
Thus sayeth the nihilists of the world.
If that’s what you believe, and you deliberately disbelieve in an afterlife or an essential moral order to everything, then why shouldn’t women be subordinated to men? There is no moral code to say that they shouldn’t be. It doesn’t matter how we treat each other if there is no superordinate law that commands it. We can make up the rules any way we want, whenever we want. And if that’s the case, power is the only deciding factor, not the rightness or wrongness of an action or an institution. Whoever is strongest runs the show. Period. Not whoever’s the most intelligent and/or empathetic.
And if power is the deciding factor—not principle—then total rule is the only option. But rules require rulers, and rulers are people. And people have agendas. And agendas change whenever people are replaced by other people. Pretty soon, the social order breaks down and we’re left with feuding warlords, each one making up the rules as he goes along. And if the people resist the rules, the rules tend to get tighter and tighter until the only rule left is the brutal will of the ruler.
That’s a dictatorship.
But is that what the baby-killing rampage at the opening of “Barbie” is all about? Smashing all the rules? I don’t think so. Because the little girls aren’t killing babies, they’re killing symbols. Dolls are symbols. But symbols of what? In this case, it’s not real babies they symbolize. That would be weird. It’s not even motherhood. We know that because the movie strongly affirms motherhood throughout.
So, what’s the rampage all about?
The smashing of the baby dolls signifies the girls' call to evolve, to embrace their potential beyond the restrictive function that nature imposes upon them. Through this act of rebellion and destruction, “Barbie” encourages the women and girls in the audience to vent their frustration with nature (and God) for confining them to a body that not only houses their own soul but by design can also house the soul of another.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, nature (and God) also installed the desire to have babies, installed so deep that it cannot be ignored. And for who knows how long, perhaps 100K years or more, the act of giving birth to all those babies not only causes excruciating pain but carries with it a significant risk of dying in the process.
If there were an alternative way to bring new people into this world, the current setup would be the stuff of horror movies, right up there with “Alien,” where parasitic creatures use human bodies as hosts, leaving them bloody and dead without so much as a thank-you note.
Such a deal.
Looking at it from this perspective, the murderous rage in the eyes of these little girls, as they smash their dolls’ heads, starts to make sense. I mean, what woman couldn’t relate? No wonder there’s a prayer that some Jewish men say when they get up in the morning: “Thank you for not making me a woman!” You’d have to be out of your mind to volunteer for that role.
When I was a young man, military service was mandatory. You either went to Vietnam, to Canada, or to jail. Those were your options. But women? Their options are far more brutal. It’s either have babies or not have babies. If you do, your life is no longer your own. And if you don’t, you have to contend with that unquenchable desire buried deep within your heart for the rest of your life.
Of course, there are a minority of women who don’t feel that way. But they still have to guard against pregnancy, using methods that come with their own costs for at least the first 50 years of their life. After that, it’s the pangs of not having grandkids that start to rise up from the depths. It’s not fair.
It’s not fair.
So, I’m giving these little girls a pass. They can be just as angry as they goddam want. They’ve earned that right. They are entitled to be angry at nature (and God) for trapping them in a biological ecosystem that forces this unfair role upon them. And since men can’t have babies, that makes it even more unfair.
But it’s the guilt around airing their frustrations openly and honestly that keeps women trapped, institutionalized by the unspoken prohibition against uttering even one word of complaint, lest they be condemned as heretics, subversives, witches, or monsters.
Women against God. Women against nature. Women against men.
And men aren’t exempt from this existential crisis, either. Ken is deeply torn about his need for Barbie. When the movie’s narrator says that he’s only happy when Barbie is looking at him, there’s not a man alive who cannot admit that there’s at least a little bit of truth to that. Men need the approval of women. That’s hardwired into us as deeply as the desire to bear children is in women. These impulses are two sides of the same procreational coin.
For "Barbie" and Ken, this goes far beyond merely questioning established norms and embracing their authentic selves. It reveals the spiritual angst caused by being in human bodies, which is way more fundamental a problem than societal constraints. This goes much deeper than that. There are biological realities to the physical world, and there are times when neither men nor women are particularly happy about that, especially when it comes to squeezing a nine-pound baby out of an impossibly small orifice—or—having to pay through that other impossibly small orifice—the nose—so that the first orifice has a decent chance of surviving the procedure.
Life is hard.
But no one is allowed to say so, not really, not without being accused of being either anti-God, anti-nature, or a whiner. And the raw, unfiltered mayhem of the little girls smashing their babies’ heads is what that rage looks like when it’s stripped naked—should anyone dare to look.
This doesn’t mean that babies' heads should be smashed. That’s not the point. It means that unless we are honest about the trap nature (and God) has tricked us into, our anger will come out sideways in the most inexplicable ways. It’s okay to say that there are very serious design flaws in the female human body, namely the unbelievably painful and dangerous ordeal of delivering a baby. But unless we’re honest about it and openly voice our complaints, rather than repress them, every other complaint we have is going to be irrationally exaggerated.
The only thing worse than having to put up with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is being made to feel guilty about not liking it. The human condition, much to our eternal pissed-offedness about it, is unconditional. And even if we get rid of some of our weaknesses through technological innovations, we will never get rid of them all.
There’s one thing that makes life bearable, and that’s the love that comes as a result of bravely bearing up under the hardships imposed by the human condition. It’s the love that comes as a result of voluntarily walking into the trap that nature has set, fully knowing that it’s gonna hurt.
Courage is the flip side of empathy. They foster each other. It’s courage, along with the anticipation of new life, whether a baby or some yet-to-be-born aspect of ourselves, that makes living not just lovely but loving. Empathy and courage make the whole damn thing worthwhile.